Page 34 of As Angels Sin

Huh. My shadow’s been silent for a while. That’s surprising

“One.” He smiles with the cigar still between his teeth, and then he removes it. “Two is enough to keep tension high, and it makes the law believe we will inevitably cancel each other out. Why interfere with the criminals when they want to kill each other? More importantly, why send good police officers to die, when the bad ones will accept a golden handshake to set us free?” He looks at Mark, wriggling his eyebrows in some coded message. Mark does a similar brow shuffle, and shrugs his shoulders.

“One man cannot sit at the head of the table alone. It would mean the chaos has ended, and rather than live in harmony under my thumb, the police would send their battalions in to bring me down.”

He leaves another pause, still expecting me to speak.

I do, “Okay?”

Matteo frowns. “Jesus, Crue.”

Blasphemy? So much for being a good Catholic boy.

“Without someone to oppose me, they’ll send SWAT teams to raid my house nightly, until they take me in. I won’t be able to take a shit without someone jotting it down as evidence.”

I flick my eyes between Matteo and Mark, while searching my mind for another answer. I go with, “Makes sense.”

“I needed someone to fill Lorenzo’s seat.” He rakes a hand through his hair, growing increasingly frustrated.

You’re fucking with him, aren’t you?My shadow finds it amusing. So, do I.

“I understand. Have since your colorful lesson.” I stay deadpan. “I’m going to kill Tomas, Matteo. I have to. He ruined my peace with Lorenzo, and he has to pay the price for it.”

Not that it’s going to happen. But someone needs to die, so I can put this mess behind me. I see where the rest of this is going. With Tomas under his thumb, Matteo will put off the idea of marriage, to bring stability to our relationship, his and mine I mean.

His and yours or hers and yours?Who knows...

But I’ll say it bluntly, and I’ll say it truly. Tomas won’t draw one more breath than I allow him to. It will be my way of testing the waters and seeing how Matteo’s will react to it. In truth, his reaction matters little. I’ve already set my mind to this, and I won’t fail again.

“I’m going to urge you to think this through, Crue. Mark and I have been working very closely over the past few months, and I believe all of us can benefit greatly from this incident. But in order to see it through to the end, Tomas must survive.”

“And what about her?”

Could it be? Have I grown a conscience? No, of course not. She just makes your cock explode.

But I know there’s more to us than just the sex. If there wasn’t, I’d have satisfied my need at our first tryst and I wouldn’t be here now, with my shadow barking bullshit in my brain twenty-four seven.

“Speaking ofher,there she is,” Mark points to where Fiametta just arrived, after spending time at her dad’s graveside. His trying to get rid of me, after his and Matteo’s ambush, didn’t play out the way they had hoped it would. “You should go talk to her.”

I don’t want to join Lorenzo in a wooden box, so I start walking toward Fiametta.

“Think about what I’ve said, Crue.” Matteo calls out, once I’m far enough to let a growl slip out. “You won’t regret it.”

I already regret it. The whole damned thing. I should’ve dealt with Lorenzo in my own way, and in my own time, without Matteo’s interruption. Now, I’ll have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when his men will come to cut the loose end I’ve become.

It’s worse now, and it will become increasingly so, the more time I spend with Fiametta. In seven months, maybe less if my numbers are off, she’s going to bring a kid into this world. My child.Ourchild.

I’m not only looking out for myself, now. This reminds me of Leadville and of Devin. His weakness was children. I know they weren’t his children, but rather teenaged girls, who’d barely crossed the threshold into womanhood. But they were someone else’s daughters. They were someone else’s weaknesses.

Fuck.

Fiametta spots me coming toward her, and lifts a hand to wave at me. I mimic her, unsure of how to handle this situation. As the small crowd starts coagulating around her, among them the ginger firecracker, Simone, I stop in my tracks and observe her.

As much as I despised her father, I have remained true to my word. When the shooting stopped around the Napoli mansion, I returned to keep my ever-watchful eye on her. From a distance. In the tree’s that Lorenzo used to love staring at by day, and from her window at night. I caught short bouts of sleep around dusk and dawn, when the guard shifts changed hands, and I ate gas station snacks to sustain myself. I wasn’t going to leave her side, not with Tomas in the house. I was waiting... no, hoping he would make an attempt to get closer to her, so I could bring down my hammer of justice.

But he kept his distance, as did I, probably under the assumption that Fiametta would kill him if he got too close. Inever thought he’d was the type of man to make a smart play, but staying away from her was the smartest thing he could have done.

So, I watch. I am seeing my greatest fears become reality, right before my eyes. The fun-suckers are ripping the best part of death to shreds, with their tears, hugs and false smiles. The only two who should be crying are Fiametta and Simone.

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